


War, Duty, and Everything There Is

by hadeschild



Category: Cinders (Visual Novel)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Romance, Sexual Content, Spoilers, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 04:51:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7420642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hadeschild/pseuds/hadeschild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perrault remembers the life that led him to Cinders.</p><p>A character study of Perrault that uses/follows up on the Independent Woman/Perrault Romance ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first thing Perrault will remember is the feeling of his father’s fingers on his wrist, the weight in his own hand, the warm feel of the leather in his palm. He will never tell anyone that this is the first thing he knows, the heft of a sword, because it seems too predictable, but he will never forget it either.

“Let me hold it, Papa.” His voice is firm, sure. He is always sure of himself, as his father likes to say and Perrault is proud of himself for that. It seems like the right thing for a man of the sword, for a man of duty, and these are things he desperately wants to be.

The sword is heavy, too heavy, but as it begins to slip to the floor his father swipes it from him in a smooth, steady move that Perrault can’t see for its speed. When he’s older, with his sword in his hand as it flashes, shimmies through the air and takes down his King’s enemies, he thinks of this moment and he smiles.

***

Perrault meets his King when he is still a young man. He is short for his age but he knows he’s strong and he doesn’t mind, not really. The King is an older man, thin and not made for war, but Perrault has heard all about him and, in his eye, he can still see him on horseback leading troops. His dark beard is cropped short against his chin, and the splash of grey at his temples makes him look more like a scholar than a warrior but it takes his sister saying it to make Perrault realise that it’s true. Even so he tells her to ‘shut up’ and she sticks her tongue out at him.

He follows his father into the throne room and the two men don’t look at each other as he walks only a half-step behind. Respect is important. When his father sinks to one knee before his liege his armour rattles; it looks almost gold reflecting in the candle light. Yet it is the King himself who Perrault looks to and he shakes himself, remembering to kneel along with his father. When he looks down he finds the floor is a light-coloured stone, cool beneath his knee and cut through with veins of colour that make the room look like a pastry. The ruler chuckles and it’s a kind sound. When Perrault looks up he sees that the man has crossed his arms.

“Who is this young man you’ve brought me?” Before his father can answer the King waves his hands at the pair. “Oh stand up, stand up, I have never asked you to stand on ceremony before.”

Perrault follows his father to his feet.

“It is important that I show you the due res-“

“Yes, yes.” He laughs and steps down from his throne, approaches Perrault himself and the young man feels his eyes widen as he does. The crown tipped on the man’s head sparkles, as do his eyes. “This is your son, then?”

Perrault nods, lowering his head into an almost bow. “Yes, Your Majesty. Perrault, sir,” he answers for his father, hearing his thin voice. 

By comparison the King’s voice echoes through the room. “ _Perrault_ , is it?” He feels the King’s eyes run over him, tickling the tender places like a drop of water running down his skin. “Well, Perrault, is your father right? You want to join my guard?”

He perks up at this, standing straighter. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“Are you good with a sword, Perrault? Like to fight?”

He pauses. The question sounds innocent enough but he knows the King is clever. “Yes, sir. My father has taught me to fight.”

The King nods, his arms crossing. “Have you killed a man, boy?”

He feels his father shift beside him and his own eyes widen on their own.

“I see that you haven’t.” He raises his chin. “Could you, do you think? End a man’s life? Make his wife a widow, his children orphans?”

He doesn’t answer and the King continues.

“Could you kill a woman, perhaps? Coming at you with a knife? Desperate, maybe looking like your own mother, but deadly? Or a child, ready to kill you? Ready to kill me?” He barks with laughter at this last thought, although the question is serious.

Perrault straightens. “I think so, Your Grace.”

“An honest answer, at least.” The King shrugs. “And would you enjoy it, Perrault?”

Now he does answer at once. “I would enjoy doing my duty, Your Majesty.”

The King smiles, a small quirk of the lips, studying him. “That sounds like your father’s answer.”

He takes it as a compliment but the King’s tone confuses him, as though he shouldn’t _want_ to be like his father, shouldn’t stand in awe of the strong and honourable man. He doesn’t have time to consider this and when he looks up again the King is looking to his father, nodding.

“Alright, I think he’ll do.” 

For the first time Perrault looks to his father and sees that he is smiling. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

The King waves again. “Yes, yes. Have him report to the Guard Captain and see what he can do with the boy.”


	2. Chapter 2

It is everything he wants in the world, the sword in his hand, the sweat on his brow. The armour is heavy at first, even though it is only leather, but he soon becomes used to it, then used to the steel that replaces it. At least he does know how to fight; many of the boys training with him have never held anything sharper than a bread knife. But he helps them just as they help him. They build him a fire, show him just how to move the wood to make sparks jump from the crumpled paper onto the wood; he shows them how to hold the sword, how to move, how to curve their body sideways and jump away before his wooden saber can connect. They smile and laugh, teasing in a way that sometimes borders on the cruel but he never minds, not really. None of these boys have the familial expectation that he does and this is the first time in his life he realises that his family is, indeed, noble. Yet they all hold themselves to the same standards: they fight for honour, they fight for their King and they will be _heroes_.

They practice in the palace yard, sleep just off the grounds and, when they run, chase each other through the forest. It is their world and it will be their lives. Perrault can think of nothing greater and he revels in this world.

There are girls here too. Courtiers who are distant and aloof when he stands guard over the halls. The Queen and her dark beauty, her swelling belly and her slanted eyes that speak of intelligence and charm. Her maids, pretty to a number and perhaps more reachable. They give some of the guards their attention, dropping handkerchiefs, empty tankards, even dirty laundry to give the men something to feel gallant about when they return them. So many of Perrault’s fellows disappear from their posts, disappear into quiet corridors and return smelling heady and rich. He watches the beautiful girls, both wealthy and poor but he will not compromise his duty.

While they practice sometimes the girls come to watch, fanning themselves in the summer heat or huddling together on the cool, crisp autumn days as he and his men strike at each other. Their bravado is always greater on these days and he enjoys it, shouting along with them and showing off. A few of the girls watch _him_ , tell him that he is handsome, even if he is quiet and invite him to walk with them by the lake. They mean the fairy lake where magic happens and one too many of the village girls have found themselves pregnant. He smiles but shakes his head, no. His duty, always his duty, holds him from accepting, from giving up his post if only for a moment, from risking a child who would carry the label “bastard”.

One girl seems more taken with him than most and Perrault notices her too. Tall and thin with auburn hair and dark eyes and she smiles at him. She often comes to watch them but she never speaks to him and he doesn’t think to speak to her. The other men notice her attention, if only because she responds to _their_ advances with a sharp tongue and a smirk before her eyes return to him. They tease him about it at first but when he simply shrugs it off they stop. He hears one of them mutter that he seems to prefer a sword to a soft, wet sheath but Perrault says nothing.

When she speaks to him at last he doesn’t see her coming – literally. Walking the town streets on the night patrol, beating a regular path through the alleys and dark corners where drunkards sleep and brigands lie in wait. He knows these streets, he pities the souls who sink here yet when he feels her hand on his shoulder, his sword rises from his sheath before he can blink. He turns and she gasps, stepping back.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“What are you doing here?” He barks the words even as he flushes.

“I…” she stops and her stubborn tongue seems to fail her, but at last she raises herself up, as though she had practiced for this, and her chin juts forward. “I came to seduce you.”

There’s a pause and neither of them move except for her to quirk her mouth at him and raise an eyebrow.

“Is that a joke?” His sword slides back into place at his side and he looks at her. “This is a dangerous place, you shouldn’t be here.”

“You will defend me, won’t you? Keep me safe?”

He nods once, a sharp movement and turns away. “Go home.”

When she places a hand on his cheek this time he doesn’t shy away and she turns his face towards her. “I wasn’t joking.” Her lips taste like beer, thick and rich, and it takes him a moment to realise that she’s kissing him. His arms are on her back somehow and when she uses her tongue to open his mouth he moans into her. When he pushes her back against a wall she giggles, but her throat is hoarse and he takes her mouth again, pressing into her.

Her body is tight and she is so very wet when he slides inside of her; her sigh of pleasure makes him feel like he is going to come completely undone. He breathes, steadying himself and presses his lips against her neck, tasting her sweat in the darkness. She’s not a virgin and the way she grinds against him he doesn’t think she knows that he is, but he’s not going to tell her. When he begins to move inside of her it feels like the world has condensed, has shrunk down so there is nothing left but him and her and the glorious feeling riding along his shaft, no sounds but the desperate gasps that slip into his ear. _Now_ he understands. But when he feels his end coming, driving into her with a determined and steady rhythm that is so much more blissful than anything he has felt before, he remembers to pull out, jerking back into the cool night air as he spills his seed over her thighs.

Her mouth is open, gaping in surprise at him and he almost apologises but she cleans herself and drops her skirts, lips quirking. When she leans in to kiss him she whispers against him “That was easier than I thought.”

She turns to walk away and, feeling the cool breeze now teasing his open trousers he calls out: “Wait…can I see you? What’s your name?”

“We’ll see.” She smiles back at him. “And it’s Margrite.”

They do see each other again. And again. And again. Long afternoons in the forest spent hand in hand; lazy nights in the inn while she teaches him about women. He learns all about this woman, her dreams of a family, every one of her siblings, where to touch her, how to make her scream his name and shudder with pleasure.

But he doesn’t forget his duty, never leaves his post. Not for her, not for anyone.

When he kills his first man, a desperate thief who lunges at him with a broken shard of glass and whose life slips away too easily beneath his blade, he buries his face in her lap and weeps. Her hand on his head is everything he needs. When she sits on top of him later that night, riding him with a slow, steady beat that seems to match the thunder in his ears she tells him that she loves him.


	3. Chapter 3

The war begins with a clap rather than a rumble, a sudden shock of news that shakes the country and calls the men to action. He sees his father, older now, but proud as he kneels before his King, surrounded by the men of their city. He pledges a swift and certain victory to his King. And he, Perrault, will follow him into that battle. His duty surrounds him, engages him and he spends every moment practicing on the field.

He has begun to see Margrite less but the time they have together is more urgent, their love making more desperate. When she climaxes now it is like a white, hot light spilling from her before a cloud covers her and she is gone. When his own end comes, it feels sharper, more violent, like when he strikes someone with his sword. And when he falls asleep beside her she whispers that she’s afraid.

He doesn’t have time for fear. His King has ordered them to march and he will do as he has been commanded, it is his life, his destiny. And perhaps he will die out there but when he does it will be good, it will be _right_ , and it will be at the behest of his liege lord.

Battle follows battle, the rush of blood in his ears and he charges at the enemy’s men, cuts them down. Once, only once he feels the crush of a blade against him, splitting his cheek from one ear almost to his eye and he laughs later. The other men laugh too, telling him not to worry, that women like a man with scars. The camp followers try to prove it to him, whispering that he’s still a man but he doesn’t need their validation and he remembers Margrite. His sword feels hot and ready in the scabbard at his side, always ready for use, burning at him as a constant reminder of duty.

And when it is out, scorching his hands with bloodlust and his heart pounds in his ears, he feels complete at last. 

Yet the reality here is grim. When he had imagined battlefields as a boy they had been blue skied, green grassed and strewn with bloodless enemies. Here the injured wail for their mothers, the scavengers pick at filled purses, cutting away rings and trinkets that didn’t bring the luck they were promised. And the smell is one to make him gage. The crows are the worst, screeching at each other and tearing at the faces and arms of men. He kills every one he finds, reminding them that man is still their master.

He is alive here in a way that he never has been before and he does well. Promoted once, then again. Injured, but honoured and when the truce is called, a stalemate to negotiate a final and lasting peace he stands guard beside his King. His father smiles at him and he doesn’t have to say that he is proud.

Peace is called before anyone seems ready for it. While this is an end to violence, Perrault listens as his companions grumble and curse the enemy still. He finds himself empty, empty of purpose and yet, oddly, also at peace, the job done and done well. When he returns to the city, to the guard, he remembers Margrite as a distant memory suddenly present and realises that he longs to see her again.

The first time he does is unexpected. Walking through town on market day, his sword confident in its scabbard, one hand casual on its hilt and he passes a shop. She is standing inside, a baby in her arms and his heart stops. He breathes deep, he doesn’t hurry to step inside, but the blood is in his eyes, the panic in his veins as he watches her. The worst, _his_ child and she, forced to work for nothing for a shopkeep while he fights for his King, neglecting _this_ duty for his greater one. The best? The best is a reality he doesn’t want to consider. 

His heart is pounding when he enters and she looks up, the child still fighting at her breast. It lets out a strangled cry making the two adults seem oddly silent. He struggles to remember how long he’s been gone and finds that he can’t breathe.

“I tried to wait, Perrault.” She is quiet, one hand pushing back the child’s struggles before it latches on to her breast again.

“The child isn’t mine.”

She looks at him with a surprise that tells him this is not even possible and then he laughs. The laughter feels like relief but it sounds bitter. 

“His name is Tobias. His father owns this shop. We were married last year.”

Perrault nods.

“I waited, Perrault,” she repeats and he nods again, believing her.

“Yes, I know.”


	4. Chapter 4

Another war comes. Perrault goes again, this time a sword slicing the other side of his face, making his injuries symmetrical, and it is superficial enough to heal quickly. He is healthy, it doesn’t infect and he continues on. He loses count of the men he’s killed and, lying alone in his cot at night, he wonders how he wept over that first poor thief. He sometimes still dreams about him and thinks that maybe, given half a chance, he could have fought with them here instead of lying in a shallow grave. 

When the warring ends this time he knows he is only biding his time until the next conflict, and he feels like the whole country is. He says as much to his father, who nods, smiles and lays a hand on his son’s before asking if he has a woman, or, perhaps grudgingly, a man. Perrault shakes his head and his father’s eyes are sad.

“I will not survive this peace, son.” The cough that rattles his lungs tells the truth of it.

Perrault studies his father, hears his mother listening even as she scrubs the floor behind them and she doesn’t pause, doesn’t stop. They both seem to know that death is coming for them, and for the first time since he has seen Margrite again he wishes someone could know him so well.

He wanders home slowly, his sword at his side. He considers his friends and finds they are all soldiers, some of them angry, a few of them bitter. More of them kind and driven to fight by a passion for the craft. Perrault wonders about this in himself, fighting for duty, fighting for honour. He can’t acknowledge that he loves the feel of the sword coming down over an enemy’s body, the triumph as he looks up into the rain that washes him clean of blood. Yet he feels uneasy when he considers peace, when he considers how much he longs for another war. It can’t be right to kill, it can’t be right to _enjoy_ it. He feels the duty slipping to the back of his mind for the thrill of the fight and this frightens him more than he can say.

Without realising it he has come to the lake, the place where romantics claim the fairies wait. The day is overcast but the lake is still, his own reflection staring at him with blank and empty eyes. Who are you? He stares into the lake and he doesn’t know. His hand goes back to his sword and he feels the strength there, an answer of sorts, but his chest still feels empty. 

He looks up and there are two children playing in the water. The little girl dressed like a lady, but a lady who doesn’t mind that her red hair has fallen around her shoulders, doesn’t mind that her hem is spattered with mud. The still of the lake is broken when she reaches down and splashes her companion, the shopkeeper’s son, whose own auburn hair almost matches her own. Perhaps she is his sister. Perrault never checked on Margrite and can’t be sure. That was a mistake, he decides, if only to have had the friends, to have had children around him for a little while. The boy turns and flees from the girl with a shriek, hands tight at his sides and he careens towards Perrault, running into him before he notices the man is there. 

Perrault’s hands circle the boy’s shoulder, hold him in place and the girl has stopped chasing him now, watching. Her green eyes look like emeralds and, if he didn’t know better, he would think she belongs with the fairies here.

“Watch where you’re going, boy.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Tobias stutters. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry, just don’t hurt yourself.” He releases his shoulders and tries to smile. He offers the kind of half-smile his companions claim looks more like a grimace. “Your mother will worry.”

Tobias blinks up at him and Perrault sees that he has the same sweet face and mischievous mouth as his mother. “Yes, sir.”

“Is that your sister, there?” He nods towards the girl who burst out laughing, covering her mouth with her small hands.

“Tobias’ sister?” She laughs again and the boy glares at her.

“She’s just Cinders. She lives at the manor.” The boy doesn’t explain which manor and the little girl stops long enough to come over.

“Who are you?” She’s looking up at Perrault, her long red hair pulled away from her face by the breeze.

“My name is Perrault.”

“He’s one of the city guards,” Tobias offers and Perrault nods.

The girl called “Cinders” watches him a minute and then approaches, her eyes narrowed as though studying him. When she comes close she takes his hand from where it lies on the hilt of his sword, reaching almost to shoulder height to take hold of his fingers and enclose them in her own. After a minute she lays a gentle kiss on his hand.

“Cinders, what are you doing?” 

She doesn’t seem to hear the boy as she looks up into his eyes. Her fingers are warm and Perrault sees her fingernails are very dirty. “It’s going to be alright,” she says at last and Perrault starts, dropping her hand.

“What?”

She smiles. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be alright.” She turns away before he can say anything else and Perrault watches her take Tobias’ hand and lead him out towards the lake. “Come on, let’s see if we can make it out to that island. Papa says that’s where the fairies live.”

“Why did you say that? Don’t you know he can arrest you?” The boy hisses, darting a look over his shoulder at Perrault.

“I don’t know.” The girl doesn’t look back. “He just seems so sad.”


	5. Chapter 5

No war has been called and the peace is stabilized. Slowly, the men in the guard return to their rounds, the people become used to a life without war. He finds the girls in town look at him again, one or two whispering that his scars make him even more handsome. He can’t say that he’s not tempted but when he invites one of them to the inn with him for dinner and she asks him how many men he’s killed he finds he doesn’t want to try again. The men still encourage each other, but many of his friends find themselves with wives and drift into steady lives. They still guard with him, still patrol the streets, but their conversation now turns to children and finances, not war and women. Yet Perrault can’t seem to follow them there, to find a place for himself outside the ranks of the guard. 

Within months the King declares him First Sword of the Kingdom and he’s promoted to Sergeant, assisting the Guard Captain with assignments, helping to chase down real criminals, really dangerous men. It isn’t war, it doesn’t raise the same thrill in his blood, yet Perrault finds he looks forward to his day. Using his mind as well as his sword suits him and, when he watches criminals fall to his arrest or, increasingly rarely, beneath the weight of his blade, he feels the country shift, become safer. There is something good in that that makes Perrault calm and when he sleeps he sleeps soundly.

True to his word, his father dies before the next war, but that is largely because another war fails to come. It takes years for him to disappear and in the days before he slips away in his sleep he is still correcting Perrault on his sword handling, barking orders at Perrault’s sister to keep her sons to their duty. Perrault’s mother watches, a hand on her husband’s shoulder, but he notices that when she looks away her eyes are sad. She is losing the man she loves and she knows it.

His father’s funeral is not ornate, but it is well attended, respected as he was. Perhaps they were never true nobility but they ranked high enough to count and his father’s advice to the King had been sound enough to make him invaluable to the kingdom. The King himself attends, his dark beard now white and long. As the family sits alone after the service Perrault’s sister comments that he looks even more the scholar now. When Perrault smiles at her she sticks her tongue out at him again. He laughs long and full. Although he is sad, he finds that he has a good life, that he is content.

The next time he sees the King, the Prince is at his side. A boy still but almost a young man who watches his father with calm awe. Perrault thinks of his own father as he sinks down to one knee before the throne and, this time, the King does not wave the gesture away. Perhaps he has at last grown used to ceremony.

“Please, rise, Sargeant.”

Perrault obeys, finding the floor and walls still the milky stone. The King’s crown doesn’t glint the way it once did and his own armour is made of leather rather than his father’s steel. “Your majesty.” He turns to the boy and offers a small bow. “My Prince.” The boy looks surprised by the acknowledgement but says nothing.

“I did not have the time to speak to you at your father’s funeral. I was sorry for his death. I know you lost a good father as I lost a good friend.”

Perrault nods, a sharp movement and his eyes remain downturned. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

“But now I find myself in need of an advisor, boy.” The King’s arms cross his increasingly lean and slender frame. If it weren’t for the strength and colour in his face Perrault would have wondered if the man were ill.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Your father always did well by me, advised caution when he could.” The King nods. “This peace is his doing as much as it is mine.”

Perrault blinks now.

The King nods. “He may have been a man of war, but the man had an eye for taking a peace and keeping it.” The monarch makes a fist as he speaks, as though squeezing said peace from the air. “We have one now but still,” and now he levels a steady gaze at Perrault. “I find I need an advisor.”

“I imagine there are many noble men who would be honoured to fill the position.”

The King snorts a laugh that makes him sound younger than he is, and his son smiles at Perrault, shaking his young head. “Fools.” 

“Your Grace?”

“They. Are. Fools.” The King smiles even as he spells the facts out for Perrault. “I need a fighting man, a man on the streets who understands…” he stops. “Who understands what a man in my position cannot. Who sees the things I don’t.”

“You want _me_ to advise you, Your Grace?”

“I do.” 

Perrault looks to the Prince whose long hair is tied back in a dignified tail that runs down his back. The young man does not even have stubble yet but already he seems upright, ready for rule. “But…my position with the city guard?”

“Will remain unchanged. This is not a formal posting, but a friendly one. Your father may have been my general but that was not how he advised me.” The King now grins as though sharing a secret joke. “Well…not always.” He takes a breath. “Your Captain tells me that you are an honest man, and intelligent – the sort of man I find I need. Do you think you can do that?”

Perrault lowers himself into another bow, noticing with strained attention the mud that cakes the toe of one boot. “I would be honoured, Your Grace.”

“Good.”

“On one condition, however.”

The King raises an eyebrow, but his lips twitch as though hiding a smile. “Name it.”

“I haven’t been called ‘boy’ in nearly twenty years. My name is ‘Perrault’, Your Majesty.”

The laugh that escapes the monarch is long and real and finishes with a clap of his hands. “Fair enough. But then I have one of my own.”

Perrault nods even as he smiles.

“My name is ‘Henri’. I would ask that you call me that. Enough people point out my majesty and my grace with every comment.”

Perrault stares but nods at last. “Of course.”

The King turns his dark eyes on his son, who is smiling with his father. “You will call him ‘Sargeant’ however. I will have no disrespect from the future King.”

The boy nods but continues to smile. “Of course, father.”


	6. Chapter 6

Knowing the King does not impact his work as he had expected and, as the Guard Captain comes to trust him further, Perrault’s responsibilities only become more, rather than less. Yet his arrests decrease, the city becomes safer. In a move that shocks everyone but him, the King declares that homes will be given to everyone who needs them and quickly offers work to anyone who will have it in building the new abodes, to expand the town to accommodate new neighbourhoods. Almost overnight he clears out the crime-ridden corners of the city and sends in Perrault and his guards to mop up those who refuse to see the writing on the wall.

Now Perrault’s work takes him further and further afield, now tracking bandits, now rescuing a kidnapped child in the neighbouring village. More and more his city patrols are quiet walks through town in which he considers the problems of the court, the questions of his King. More and more his sword is left sheathed at his side and he finds that he doesn’t burn to use it quite as often.

He meets the King every week, walking with the man in the palace gardens in any weather as he speaks out the problems of the kingdom. Perrault had never considered much beyond ‘track down the bad guy, hit him with your sword’ but this makes it infinitely clear to him that there is good reason for the ruling class. They might swim in champagne and eat grapes but they also had so much intrigue to deal with that the trade-off hardly seemed fair; Perrault prefers the simple austerity of the guard house and a night without fear of assassins himself. A man at his front with a sword he could face, but the cleaning woman with poison in your soup was another thing entirely. When he tells the King this, the man laughs and admits that he sees Perrault’s point. 

He finds that giving advice is something that he is good at, and one day he begins considering the King to be a friend. Their weekly walks becomes a highlight in his otherwise solitary and routine life. He does not feel himself pulled by guilt over his enjoyment of _this_ duty the way he sometimes feels about his grim duty – his grim joy – of putting his sword to a man’s neck.

The Prince, too, becomes a fixture in Perrault’s life. Always walking a few steps behind his father and listening, _listening_ with such attention that Perrault doesn’t know where he keeps everything he learns. Sometimes the boy offers an opinion of his own and once or twice his father nods, smiles and claps him on the shoulder. When a library is founded, a university is planned, Perrault can see the influence of the boy. He will be a good king, too, Perrault believes.

Yet the times he is freest, the time he feels himself fully is when he is on the chase, on the hunt for a criminal, his sword drawn, his instincts alive. He finds himself going off alone, away from his patrols when he does so, a risk, he knows, but one he is becoming too comfortable in. The Captain warns him, threatens him with punishment, but the results are unarguable and finally the Captain simply tells him not to die at least. When the Captain retires, the King promotes Perrault to the role himself and he finds his risks to be more brazen, now that no one can hold him back. 

Predictably, one day things fall to pieces. He and his men come upon a camp of bandits in the woods. He pursues their leader and when he steps forward to confront him, when the man turns to face him and he arrests him in the name of the King he feels everything go wrong even before the first blow lands. He feels each strike of the swords yet none hit home, failing to drive the life from him even as they drive him to the ground. The man flees and the Captain lies bleeding on the forest floor. He feels the hilt of his sword in his hand and is grateful to have it with him in his final moments.

Yet the hands on his shoulders, the soft and exotic voice whispering to him “You seem to need some help, my friend,” tells him that he is going to live.

When he regains consciousness he is back in town, lying in the shop everyone whispers belongs to a witch and the witch herself is leaning over him. She is beautiful and dark and Perrault wonders how she came to live here, her herbs and sharp-smelling spices cluttering the room.   
She sees him awake and holds a warm hand to his chest. “Don’t move, friend, you are still not well. Whatever you did to those boys they were certainly angry.”

He looks down and sees his body crossed with bandages, but somehow here he feels the comfort of friends, the solidarity of kindred spirits. Her makeup is pasty-white, a skeleton gracing the body of a beautiful woman that makes him wonder what she looks like without the makeup…without anything on at all. “You…saved me.”

“I did indeed.” She stands back and crosses her arms, thick lips and warm brown eyes studying him. “You were lucky. No one else was going to.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Do you have a name then, lucky man?”

“Perrault.” His voice is rough when it comes out and he tries to clear his throat but it’s dry. Almost at once she is pressing a mug of water into his hands and he drinks deep from the glass, nodding his thanks.

“The Sergeant, yes? The one who the King likes to follow him around?”

Perrault frowns and the woman smiles at his discomfort. “Captain, actually.”

“ _Captain_ , well. I am Madame Ghede.”

He nods, finds himself offering a smile. “A pleasure, Madame.”


	7. Chapter 7

The night the King dies he is in Ghede’s rooms. It has been years since he remembered Margrite and now it is Ghede who he imagines in his bed, who sometimes arrives in his dreams as if by the magic she claims not to know. She is kind where he needs it and yet she always keeps herself apart from him even as she welcomes him into her bed. He wakes with her curled beside him, her back pressed against his side and his arm thrown around her as the church bells call out the tragedy to the town. The white of bone painted on her skin is stark against her own darkness and the warm tan of his weathered skin. Only one time did he see her without those markings and he had thought he had never seen her so naked before. She hadn’t seen him, he had caught sight of her washing through the door and stopped to watch the way lovers do. Even then he had felt dirty and knew that she would throw him out if she knew.

They both sit up together at the sound now, she cursing in a language he doesn’t understand.

She looks at him. “What is it, Perrault?” The fear is rich and real in her voice, speaking of terrors in a past she rarely describes, a past spoken of only in the criss-cross of scarring across her back, the faint stretchmarks on her stomach, the occasional whimpering in her sleep.

“The King. The King is dead.” The words are heavy and he feels it like each chime of the bell is a boot hitting him in the chest. He opens his mouth to speak, the words “my friend” sitting on lips that refuse to work.

She lets out a huff and lies down again. “Another dead tyrant. When will they stop ringing the bells so we can get some sleep?”

He looks down at her, and she is barely visible in the thin light. “He was a good man.”

“He was a King.” She doesn’t open her eyes, settling beneath the covers. “And you will go to your duty.” She doesn’t seem to feel him watching her, but when he nods she lets out a little sigh, even with her eyes closed. “Go then.”

Standing in the gloom and finding his clothes, he slips from the back door and heads through the streets. The bells ring on and on and on but there are few yet wandering in the dark. He finds his chest hammering when he wonders if they care as little as Ghede does. When he arrives at the palace he finds the guard on high alert, hands on their swords as he approaches. They relax only when he declares himself, holding his hands out and showing them his face. They nod and he enters the castle, the entrance hall, remembering the first time he ever stepped inside. The bells still chiming in the town below makes him feel terribly alone.

A man in livery rushes to catch him. “The Prince, he asked you go to him immediately.”

Perrault nods. He should be standing guard, a last honour guard over his fallen friend while the people of the country arrive to mourn, but the living are more important than the dead. He can hear the laughter of his friend, now gone, mocking him.

He finds the Prince in the throne room, surprising Perrault by all measure. The empty room seems to swamp the young man in a way it never had his father, the throne on which he sits holding him up when he looks like he wants to collapse.

Perrault approaches slowly and when the Prince finally looks up to him, eyes red and running with grief and fear the older man falls to one knee. “Your Majesty.” The new address is one he will have to get used to, he thinks, but Basile shakes his head.

“Not yet, Perrault. I am still a prince.” He takes a deep breath as though he lacks the energy even to speak. “Still a prince…for a little while.”

Perrault rises to his feet and struggles to find what to do; he has never been good with grief. “Did he die…well?”

The Prince’s eyes are sharp when they meet his and Perrault knows it was the wrong thing to say. “He was too young. He was not ready. No, he did not _die well_.”

Perrault can’t explain that this is not precisely what he meant but he remains silent for a long time, the boy staring at his own feet. “I am…very sorry, Basile,” he says at last, using the boy’s name for what feels like the first time.

“I am not ready for this, Captain.” The boy sounds younger than Perrault has ever heard, although a man now, tall and broad chested. He watches the man’s long fingers as he weaves them together, his blue eyes bright in the candlelight.

“You have to be,” he sighs back on his heels. “It is you duty to be.”

The Prince’s eyes are sharp, emotion grated and hollow on a boy with little sleep and much too much of everything else. “Have you ever done anything that is not _your duty_ , Captain?” 

Perrault swallows. “To take pleasure in one’s duty, in doing one’s duty well…my own father taught me that there is nothing greater.”

The Prince nods and looks away, leans back on the chair. “But how in God’s name do I know if I have done it well…if I will ever _do it well_?”

Perrault steps forward although every instinct is telling him to hold back, to wait. Yet when his hand rests on the boy’s shoulder, the young man looks up at him. The nerves in his shoulders relax back as though releasing a great weight. “I have seen you work with your father. I have seen him train a good and solid ruler. I believe your people will remember you well.”

Basile’s hand falling on Perrault’s feels strange, the soft skin of the boy’s against the callous of his own. The Prince’s eyes are brighter, his smile more natural when he looks up. “Thank you, Perrault. Thank you.”

The Captain steps back but doesn’t turn to leave. King or not, this boy is his monarch now and he has not yet been dismissed. After a moment the Prince looks up to him and his eyes have hardened somewhat, the grief and fear pushed away. “You always advised my father well. I wonder…would you consider continuing to do the same for me?”

Perrault smiles. “You are a valued friend, as was your father. It would be my great honour.” He swallows. “But just as with him I would offer a condition.”

Basile nods. “Name it.” He looks strange as he does, as though knowing this is the first of many favours he will have the right to grant…or to deny.

“I would stand vigil over the King tonight, and until his burial.”

The Prince’s forehead contracts. “Are you certain? That may be several days still.”

Perrault nods. “It is my duty, sire.”

Basile nods at last. “Of course, Perrault. I believe my father would have liked that.”

The Captain nods, a shallow dip of his head, resisting the urge to drop to one knee before the throne again. 

When he looks up the Prince is smiling. “I had wondered if you would ask me to call you ‘Perrault’, as you did my father.”

Perrualt smiles. “You are much too young for that.”

As he turns to leave, however, the boy calls out. “One last thing…I would know…father always claimed you loved your duty more than anyone he had ever met. I never imagined you would be married, that you would have a family.” The Prince swallows, as does Perrault, not quite meeting his monarch’s eye. “I will not be King until I find a Queen, this was my father’s last decree. He said it was important for a man of duty…for a man of duty to have someone to help him, someone to remind him of the beauty of the world.” He shrugs. “I don’t believe mother was ever that for him, _could_ ever be that for him. I wondered if he got that idea from you.” He speaks quickly, as though to apologise for the question with his speed.

Perrault waits, wondering what to say. He imagines Ghede where she lies asleep. He remembers the hand his mother laid on his father’s shoulder before he died and the tears she shed for him long afterwards. His eyes are steady when they meet the Prince’s. “No, that was not from me. I have no one.” The boy looks sad a moment and Perrault wonders if he should have answered at all. Instead he tries to smile, tries to make the young man look brighter. “But I am an old fighter, long used to being alone. I doubt it will be so difficult for a handsome young Prince to find a queen.”


	8. Chapter 8

Everything seems to change with the King’s death, although, if pressed, Perrault would have struggled to explain exactly how. His rounds remain the same, his weekly meetings at the palace unchanged. And although he and Ghede now begin to drift apart, to see each other less, then not at all, it feels more that they have simply accepted something that was always there…or, perhaps, something that was never there at all.

Despite this, Perrault feels an increasing sense of unease as he wanders his rounds. The town is safer than it ever has been before but he has never felt this sense of doom. Every day he feels that he is racing dark clouds on the horizon, rushing to get home before he gets wet. But he doesn’t know what that storm will be.

Perhaps it is the Prince talking about constitutions and democracy, about the excesses of the nobles, the struggles of the people. Perrault finds he agrees with much of what the Prince believes and yet – and yet – he cannot seem to imagine a world without a King, a world without nobles to guide him. 

The peace has stretched beyond something that is accepted and now it is something taken for granted. Fewer boys clamber to join his guard and those who do now seem to seek the flashing armour, the smiles of the pretty girls in the market as they stroll through on their daily patrol. He hears fewer people speak of ‘honour’ and of ‘duty’, and he often finds himself lost and alone in his own sense of what is right. Even as the Prince listens, understands, and is even improved by what advice Perrault can offer, he misses his friend, the King; he misses his father and he misses a past that he feels he could understand.

Before when loneliness had struck, he had buried himself in his duty, taken up his sword and driven the guard through practice forcing the isolation away. Now, he tries, God _knows_ he tries, chasing down what few criminals seem to harass their town, pushing his Sergeant back in the practice ring until both men sweat and smile at the release. But when he climbs into bed at night the emptiness threatens to consume him.

More often now he finds himself in the inn, a tankard of ale in one hand. He never drinks too much, never becomes like the men who lie unconscious or unpleasant around him. Instead he holds his beer against him and watches the world pass, watches lovers share a meal. He watches men coming in from the fields, smiling and clapping dirty hands on their fellows’ backs while discussing the latest gossip, the latest prospective Queen for their lonely Prince. Less often he sees women looking his way, but his features have become sharper than when he was younger, his scars more visible, hair just beginning to grey, eyes sinking beneath dark circles. 

When a young woman approaches him to ask, giggling, how old he is and he responds with ‘forty-two’, he finds himself surprised that the number is so low: he feels more like a relic now than like a man.

Sometimes he _is_ still needed, the townspeople calling on him for something more than to accuse Madame Ghede of witchcraft, and he pulls his sword from its scabbard. It comes down on his enemies quickly, the same efficiency in his nerves, but the moments end quickly. A man beating his wife, a thief harassing the local vendors, brigands kidnapping a vendor’s son; all receive the dispassionate justice that takes him little effort, mere storms in an existence that is more often quiet walks through town and sitting alone with his beer.

One such storm has past when he meets Cinders again. When she approaches he expects the same giggling, the same mocking conversation he has come to expect from the young women who approach him now. But he finds something else instead. She doesn’t call him ‘brave’ for his profession, she doesn’t snicker about his duty. Instead she calls him out for his murder, and listens, intent and interested, when he explains about duty and about honour. She frowns, clearly she disagrees, but he doesn’t mind that so much because she doesn’t seem to mind either. When she smiles and he recognises her to be the little girl by the lake he begins to feel truly old.

Later that same day he wanders by the shop, the place where he had once found Margrite with her new life so many years ago, and now the boy Tobias stands, a handsome man, behind the counter. He is surprised when Cinders joins the young man in the store, still friends, clearly, after all these years. He remembers that last time she had been dressed like a lady and wonders what has happened to make her fortunes fall. Perhaps when he visits this shop next it will be her standing behind the counter holding an infant to her breast.

He sees her again only a few days later, rising to speak with her, finding himself keen for the company of someone who might become a friend. She asks him about himself and he finds he tells her, easily, openly, as though they had long been companions. He wonders if she remembers kissing his hand when she was a child and once he almost asks. Her eyes are still the sharp shade of green, her hair still orange, but it is her smile that he finds himself more and more drawn to. She is kind to him, interested in him as though she wants to know more and more, even as she seems to understand him already. He finds that, when she is gone, he hopes to find her here again.

When she asks to follow him on his patrol he is surprised. He warns her that he will not slow, he will not stop if she gets tired. He thinks that she will leave off, wander home and forget about the old man walking the streets, but she smiles and accepts. And when they return to town, when she complains about the lack of adventure and excitement he could swear that she begins to flirt with him. When she tells him, outright, that she has been attracted by his mystery, he can’t believe that she really means it. He tries to forget about it later, looking at himself reflected in one of the shop windows. He reminds himself that she is desperate to escape a house of misery as the light begins to fade and the sharp shadows on his face make him look harder, more difficult to touch.

Yet he enjoys her company just the same and, even as he tells himself not to be fooled by her, not to be fooled by _himself_ , he accepts that perhaps he may have found himself a friend in the strange girl. 

Prince Basile, however, still worries him. Worries him with his growing obsession. He will not just choose a wife but the _right_ wife, not just a woman he loves and respects but the _perfect_ one. Perrault can’t blame him sometimes, pressured into the expectation of a good marriage and he knows the boy wants to fulfil his father’s last request. Other times the Captain wishes the young man would simply choose _any_ girl and get on with the task of ruling, with the task of throwing their system into chaos as he seems so determined to do.

Yet he also feels the Prince becoming closer to him, depending upon him more. They see each other daily now, rather than once a week. They spend time in the field hunting, discussing Basile’s books and Perrault’s ideals in a way that he never had with the boy’s father. He teaches the boy about the recent past that he has only heard about in book and the Prince teaches him about philosophy and art. Beyond his duty, he finds that he deeply cares for the boy, wants him to have the very best, wants him to have the perfect girl that he is so consumed with finding. He wonders what would happen if this friend met Cinders for he knows that she would make a magnificent Queen.

When the Prince approaches him to become spymaster, Perrault is shocked, truly shocked. He had felt their friendship becoming something so much more than that, so much more than simple obligation that he doesn’t know what to say. He had thought the boy understood him more than to ask something like _this_ of him. But if this is his new duty, should he not rise to it, regardless of his own desires, just as he always tells the Prince he ought to do?

Standing outside Cinder’s manor, the walls of redbrick and white-washed columns rising like a colossus from the forest, he doesn’t quite remember how he came here and wonders if this is little more than a dream. And when she allows him into the kitchen, into this little world where her straw bed lies tidy and alone, he believes it must be. Yet nothing feels quite as real as when she tells him her mind and he feels his own future unfolding before him. Nothing feels quite as tangible as when she clutches his arm by the lake, offers to run away with him. He considers the prospect of the life of adventure, her at his side, continuing to help those who need it, fulfilling what she says is his greater duty. He doesn’t allow himself to imagine anything more than friendship between them, a mutual respect, even when she tells him that he’s handsome and smiles in that enigmatic way.

He still can’t decide if she is only using him, manipulating him to escape a bad life and he will not jump into anything so easily. He won’t even allow himself to imagine.


	9. Chapter 9

Perrault finally decides to retire on the night of the ball. Basile has left him these few days in which to consider his future, to _decide for himself_ as Cinders reminds him. He wishes that he could give her that ability, and he wonders if he should offer to become her husband, to take her away to the new house and land Basile offers him. Perhaps he should offer her a life of luxury and leisure in which he gives her the respectful distance she needs, in which she can take charge of his house and make it whatever she wants while he continues defending towns and running thieves and murderers from their dens. Yet he doesn’t, not yet. He doesn’t want to see the look of gratitude that is _just about_ hiding the disappointment, the fear that he might make her share his bed along with his home.

He watches Basile when the boy is around. It is his duty to keep his lord alive, to keep him safe and he will not shirk that duty while it is still his. This ball will mark the end of that duty as it will mark the beginning of the Prince’s, and Perrault will hold true until the very last. He still wonders if he has made the right decision in refusing his Prince.

He encourages the boy to _talk_ , at least, to the women who are here. He seems so determined to choose the _right woman_ and so very afraid to find that one of these women might be her. He recognises the first girl with whom he speaks as one of the stepsisters Cinders has mentioned. He remembers the cruelty she has alluded to and the ragged scar he had noticed running up one arm that looked like a burn. 

Yet this sister is beautiful and looks like the Queens he has seen in picture books; he wonders if she might guide the Prince towards the future he wants. She seems intelligent, although vague and uncertain about herself. When she leaves him behind Perrault is somewhat relieved. Soon she is replaced by her sister, looking less like a queen and more like a spymaster. He thinks, with a wry smile, that perhaps she will take the position he has neglected. The two seem to get on well and Perrault fights his own surprise. The girl’s honesty is refreshing to both the Prince and himself and he finds that he cannot help but like this girl, even as she tells the Prince he should visit her, meet her mad family and then promptly abandons him in the hall. _She_ would have been an interesting woman to have on the throne, at least.

The Prince returns to him, his eyes tired and his shoulders weakened, but Perrault offers him a smile. Not for the first time, Perrault feels lucky that it is not _he_ who has captured all of this attention, but he is surprised when the Prince says as much to him. 

When the hall goes quiet and a new visitor appears, Perrault does not think to look closely at her. Her dress is grey and black and strangely familiar, like something he had seen tucked in the back of a closet once. Her hair, curled and free, falls around her shoulders which are bare against the glow of candlelight. Yet it is her eyes that he knows at once, shining like pieces of jade into the room, and her lips, quirked in that familiar expression of amused determination.

For a moment he feels that he cannot breathe as he looks at her. In the next moment, as he takes a shuddering gasp, he realises with a painful bloom of feeling that he wants to hold her in his arms, wants more than almost anything to take her to his room, to make her forget all the sadness in her past. It is as though the vague dreams, the shunted-aside fantasies now flood him with full and painful truth and he feels that the world has closed around him, sucking away his oxygen.

The Prince’s hand on his arm makes the world expands at once, taking in the room, taking in the monarch, and the Captain realises that nobody has noticed him standing there, his world crumbling. Her eyes catch his, and she smiles at him as he responds without a thought to the Prince, something about beauty, something about courage.

He, along with everyone in the room, are watching her approach his Prince, are watching the Prince’s eyes go wide, his smile greet her and Perrault allows himself to back away, excusing himself even as he wants to take her in his arms and fight back any man who would have her. Instead he smiles, his chest heavy; he steps back, each foot like lead. She _will_ make a good Queen, he knows, and she will make his Prince happy in a way that he truly deserves.

Perrault watches them together, watches them discuss political ideals, watches Basile smile and light up as they find common interests. Perrault knows that he is lost, alone. He allows himself to let that go. His duty, his greater duty is to his liege, to his happiness and to the good of the kingdom. Basile wraps his arms around Cinders, gazes into her eyes as they dance and she smiles at him, warms to him in a way that Perrault has never seen with him. With him she was easy, smiling and laughing, teasing. Now there is no hint of that woman, now she is regal, determined, intelligent and coy. She is everything that a Queen should be. 

He feels himself relax, feels his own dreams evaporate around him, feels himself accepting her not as she would have been to him but as she is _now_ and as she will be to the kingdom. This noblewoman will lead them into something new, this noblewoman will be his friend, as will her husband, a king and her equal. Perrault finds that he can smile now, finds that he can smile in this new duty and when Basile approaches him again, face dazed, eyes glowing, he finds that he greets his friend with genuine warmth and pleasure. This is something that the boy deserves.

Yet when he approaches her house after midnight, when she appears in her old rags and familiar dirt he wonders, he _doubts_. Was _that_ woman who she was? Is this? He steels himself to ask her to join him, to ask her to come to see the Prince. He steels himself for her humble answer, for her accompaniment to the palace and to her future.

But then she smiles, _she turns him down_. Her own sisters call her out on it, call her a fool, at least beneath their breaths; he simply doesn’t understand. Yesterday she had been only too desperate to escape, offering to run away with him; when he thinks of it he can feel her fingers on his arm again, the same determination to lose herself in a life of adventure. Now she asks to stay, smiles to the stepmother who had, only moments before, accused her of laziness, takes the hands of her sisters who have teased and mistreated her. Now she asks to stay and lead this house and care for all of them, to make their house great again.

Her beauty might have overwhelmed him earlier but it is now, when she shows her own understanding of duty, that Perrault finds himself smiling. He feels the warm and easy comfort that she is someone, finally, who understands. He smiles at her, smiles at her happiness and the future she has put before herself. She didn’t need him to rescue her, she didn’t need him to pull her from this life and she didn’t need a prince to make her great: she was always already greater than that.


	10. Chapter 10

Everyone had assumed the night of the ball would change everything, and yet everything seems to stay the same. The Prince is still unmarried. Perrault, although now technically retired, is still a common fixture in the palace. And, even though he is no long a guard, he finds the daily patrols a difficult habit to break. 

Yet things shift, begin to alter in ways that will develop into things that are greater than they are now. The Prince visits Cinders more, taking advice from this new figure on the scene of nobility and he begins to behave, in deed if not in name, like the King he seeks to be. Perrault still offers his advice to the boy, but already, even without taking the reins of government, he feels the palace’s policies shift away from him and he finds himself grateful to no longer stand guard there.

Still wifeless, the Prince seems determined to secure Cinders as his Queen and Perrault doesn’t know whether he should encourage the boy or push him towards another girl. Certainly, she would be a magnificent Queen, she speaks with intelligence and with kindness and she could guide a man like Basile, so naïve, so idealistic, into whatever she wanted him to be. 

She has improved her own station as well, the appearance at the Ball only her open riposte with the court. Almost immediately she uses funds he had no idea she had to host dinner parties, balls of her own. Always the Prince attends, sitting beside her or leading her onto the dance floor as artists and scholars debate politics, religion and philosophy around her. Several hopefuls approach her, yet Perrault is always pleased to see that, while she flirts with them, smiles at them in that beguiling way, she turns every one of them away. He is always pleased to see that she takes a moment at every ball to find him, to sit beside him and make sure he is alright.

She is on the lips of almost everyone in town, her sudden rise to a great lady, her sudden influence, her gaining ever more land to expand her house’s interests. Some whisper that she took the shopkeeper, Tobias, to bed for the funds. More whisper that she and the Prince have already become lovers. And others say that she has sworn never to marry in memory of her own mother, killed in childbirth. He believes all of them and none of them, watching from afar even as she insists he join her for her parties, invites her to dine with the family. 

These are always the most peculiar nights, watching in silence as the sisters battle each other over the dinner table. Cinders laughs at them and seems to make peace with them both while siding with neither. Carmosa, softer now, but still with a sharp word for the unwary, nods at her stepdaughter’s increasing social intelligence. He feels genuine affection for this girl and the duty she has come to embrace.

His favourite part of the evenings is when she walks with him back to town, always insisting on going herself as though _he_ were the one who needed guarding. He feels awkward leaving her at the crossroads to walk home alone and they often stand, continuing to talk until one of them begins to shiver in the night. One time after he continues home he turns to find her staring down the road that leads away from him, away from town and her home, away from everything, starring down a road that leads towards a dark and unknown horizon. He doesn’t think she knows he is watching and when she turns back towards her home there is a sad smile on her face.

The best times are his patrols. At first, a time of solitary meditation, a time to consider the Prince’s plans and requests, a time to make his own plans: plans to retire to the land his Prince has promised perhaps, or still wondering if he should run into the country and become an adventurer. Something always seems to hold him back from deciding.

When Cinders learns that he still takes this walk she begins to join him. Not daily, not weekly nor, in truth, as often as he would like, but when she can get away from her obligations she is all his for an afternoon or an evening. They walk through the town, follow the familiar patterns of his route, or, sometimes, head further afield. One time she takes him through the cemetery to her parents’ graves, and on another he takes her to meet his mother and sister. More and more often they head into the forest, seeking…anything. Sometimes they sit by the lake and he tosses rocks into the water as she weaves flower wreaths and gathers bouquets like a little girl.

They don’t always speak, but when they do it is good. One of the first times she joins him she thanks him for his help, for guiding her at a time when she needed it. He is flabbergasted, and although he tries to convince her that it was _she_ who helped _him_ , she simply smiles in her enigmatic way and shrugs. “I had never considered much about duty before,” she says and when she weaves her fingers into his it feels like the most natural gesture in the world.

Other times she asks his advice about the house, about finances (about which he knows nothing), about security (about which he knows everything) and about artists (about which he is coming to know more). It seems she just enjoys having him talk with her.

Other times it is she advising him, planning to start an adventurer’s guild, pushing him to continue to defend those who need him. When he decides to do just this, it is in her company and he arrives home energised, caught up in their mutual excitement. The next day, when she joins him again, they continue his plans. He tells her that he can never be quite himself this way with anyone else and he’s surprised when she tells him that she feels the same way.

Yet he comes to enjoy their quiet walks best, sometimes holding her hand and he is allowed to imagine everything he will never have. When he goes home to what is now a rented and Spartan room in the inn he will remember that this can never be. But for now she can be his and they can be whatever they want to be. Sometimes he thinks she wants to say something to him, stopping and looking up at him, coming close but then laughing and looking away. He never wants to say anything more to her, but he thinks it…often.

One time when they have shared a drink at the inn and walk towards her house she reaches up and kisses him softly. There is something behind her eyes, fear or hope perhaps, but he doesn’t recognise it and he doesn’t want to, turning red.

“Why did you do that?” He asks.

“I wanted to see what you would do.”

He shifts where he stands and looks around at anything but her. “I think you need to go home now.”

Whatever he may want from her he still remembers the way the Prince looks at her, still knows that she is in a sphere so far beyond him. And he knows that whatever she may think she wants she is wrong, she must be wrong. And one day she will realise the truth of it.


	11. Chapter 11

The hardest times for Perrault are when he attends her parties. At first a simple, if amusing, annoyance, the more he goes, the harder he tries, the more he finds he hates it all. When she is alone with him, when they are walking through the forest or he sits with her while trying to decide between one artist and another, when they sit with her family or the newest addition to her sponsored musicians and writers, he feels that she is his, that they are in the same world. He feels that taking her hand is the act of a friend, he feels that the soft burn that has begun to roil in his belly is natural…if something to supress. He knows that, whatever she feels, she will learn better and these walks will slowly stop. He savours their walks because he knows that she will drift towards the men and women her own age who will give her a life and, perhaps, love that she deserves.

Here, however, he knows that he is wrong, knows it in a deep and visceral way, the way a bruise tells him that he’s been wrong and has been struck. The irritation is always the same, the anger at himself, the self-delusion it took to get here, because he thought he was good enough for her.

He watches her speak about philosophy with the men around her and he understands so little. No, he understands it all but the florid way in which she says it grates him and the way the men laugh when she makes a joke makes him angry. They have so little of substance to say to her but she always seems so amused. He sees every arm she touches, every pair of shoulders she holds as she dances. When he holds her to dance he doesn’t know where to touch her, where to put his hands that won’t cause offense. When she smiles at him he doesn’t know where to look to keep from blushing, from telling everybody present how he feels.

It is worst when Basile is there, his old friend. The boy who deserves her more than any other and this is when he hates himself most. The Prince looks at her as a man staring into the sun, someone dazzled by something greater than himself. Yet when they dance together, when she offers him a secret smile, everybody in the room knows that _this_ is where she belongs. Basile looks about with more confidence with her beside him, speaks with more certainty: when she is there he seems more like a king. And Perrault knows that at any moment she will realise this, she will see where she belongs and she will leave them all behind.

He thinks he is prepared for this, thinks it is all alright so long as he has what little time with her as she can muster. But when he sees it in front of him like this he cannot stand it; the fire in his belly becomes a monster.

The first time they fight it is about this, midway through their first walk after a party at which he had gotten particularly dour, particularly drunk, before stumbling back to his own bed. He had accused her of tormenting her suitors, she had accused him of being morose, unfriendly. He had accused her of being heartless and she had told him that he was the same.

They had made up when she had agreed that they were both probably a _little_ right, something that he obstinately refused…at first. She had laughed and told him he didn’t need to come anymore, but that she always wanted him there, that she always liked to see him, when she could. Her eyes were big when she said it and he found his hands on her waist, hers on his arms. He found himself telling her that it didn’t matter and that if she wanted him there, he would go.

But that doesn’t help him while he’s here, her spacious and beautiful house turned into a noisy, crowded mess of secrets and gossip. At last he finds a place with the artists, men who often intrigued him, but who seem to have more to say with their art than with their tongues. Not that he minds. In fact, he respects that, seeing their brushes and clay as the extensions of themselves that he often felt his sword to be. He stands with them in silence as they study each other’s art, watches them pick up a brush and turn the dinner party into an art lesson for one of the new arrivals. He finds he learns something new with them, and, while he will never pick up a brush, he begins to see the world a little differently.

Yet he still finds she poisons him, as he stands there, lost in the art of others. He can feel her across the room, sometimes hear her, laughing, talking or even listening. She is the loudest listener he has ever known. One of the artists tells him that he has the soul of a painter, that he must love the way Perrault does in order to _understand_ , but Perrault argues his own ignorance, claims he doesn’t know what the man means and they return to his art.

When he finally has enough he has had a bad week already. A group of raiders getting away just as he and his men had been closing in, Basile consulting him about yet another sweeping change that he can do nothing to stop. And only after an hour of their company he finds he cannot stomach the nobles tonight, nor the artists, nor the philosophers. He can’t even sit with Sophia, who so often joins his sarcasm with her own as they watch the arrogance around them with feigned indifference. 

He waits for a rowdy moment of conversation, waits until he sees Cinders swept onto the dance floor alongside one of her sisters and he slips into the entrance hall. She will understand when he makes his excuses tomorrow.

The hall is empty save a servant, a timid girl listening at the door who shrinks back as he tries to smile, tries not to demand his coat, but to ask for it, politely. As she scurries to find it he paces the entrance hall, the heat of the spiced wine warming him and filling his mouth. He closes his eyes, his hand going for the hilt of his sword and his stomach turns when he realises it isn’t there: he hadn’t thought it would be needed on a night of finery and flirtation.

“Perrault, where are you going?” It is her. Of course it is her, his coat swinging over one arm. Nothing ever seems to happen in this house without her knowledge, without her direct approval. 

He takes a breath and turns away. “Home.”

The entrance hall is empty and, even over the buzz from the next room, the warmth of voices and company, he can hear her soft tread as she crosses the floor towards him. “Are you upset?”

“No.” He barks the word, and as she comes closer his stomach knots further, his nerves twitching. He tries to back away but his body doesn’t respond.

“I can see that you are. Please, tell me what’s happened. Is it something I’ve done? I shouldn’t have made you come to this, I’m sorry. I never wanted you to be uncomfortable.”

“You…?” He starts and when she comes close enough to touch he finds his hand on her arm. “No, Cinders. You…no.” He forces himself to smile. “Return to the Prince. He will be looking for you and you should be enjoying yourself.”

“The Prince?” Her voice is high and he feels her fingers where they’re touching his arm, scorching a hole through his finery and into his skin.

“Will you tell me one thing before I go?” It’s a fool’s question and his heart sinks as he asks it. Yet it is one that has been weighing on him, making him anxious.

“Anything, Perrault.”

“Will you accept the Prince the next time he asks?”

She looks at him, mouth slightly agape and for a moment he watches her. Suddenly she laughs in that way he has always envied in her, the way that seems to consume her whole body. He has never been able to force much more than a grudging smile.

“I will never accept him. _He_ might not realise that but…I thought I had made that clear to _you_ by now.”

“Clear? To me?”

She looks at him now as though a heavy mist were finally clearing, and when she comes towards him it’s to press her lips against his. Her mouth is hot and warm and he finds his hand on her neck, guiding her closer, holding her against him. She pulls back. “I thought you knew by now.” She kisses him again, as though an explanation, but he pushes back, feeling himself anger this time.

“Then why do you lead them on, lead him on?” He turns away. “Why do you treat them like that…look at them like that?” His eyes flash at her and he can see her shock, the slight damp on her lips from where his own have just been. “How do I know you don’t whisper the same things to every one of them?”

Her face is red, her eyes wide and hurt before she turns them away. “I suppose you don’t.” She moves as though to step closer to him but then stops and turns away, ready to leave. She halts just short of the door, taut as though she can’t force herself to go. “Sometimes I dream you and I really _had_ run away together.” She waits for a long time for him to answer, not facing him. 

He swallows. He knows that it will only take a word for her to go. He knows that, if he were a man of honour he would tell her that he never imagines the same thing, that he doesn't understand what she means. He knows that he should give her this out so that she can go on to someone else, so that she can, finally, forget about him. But he doesn't. Something about the way she can't quite meet his eyes brushes every excuse away. “I…I often think the same.” 

“It would have been a magnificent adventure.” Her green eyes sparkle when she looks up at him and he feels his nerves soften. “Ignoring our duty, going wherever we wish, living on the road, chasing down brigands and robbers.” She pauses, as though steeling herself to be brave. “Sharing a different bed every night.” Her smile is short, wicked, and she doesn’t quite look at him but it disappears in a blink. “I suppose if we had you would know by now how much I love you.” She has never said this before, but he knows that she thinks it sometimes when they’re together. “Do you think…could you ever believe me when I tell you? I need you to believe me.”

She steps towards him and he almost turns away but forces himself to stand, to look down at her. When he speaks he finds his mouth has been hanging open and his voice is hoarse, quiet. “You’re wrong…you can’t…you know it won’t last.”

She smiles and moves towards him again. “Don’t you think that’s up to us?”

He shakes his head but she’s too close now, her hands holding his cheeks, one finger stroking his scar. He leans forward, pressing his forehead against hers. “And what will I do when you realise it? When you choose one of those artists in there? One of those princes? When you marry a young man who makes you truly happy?” He swallows. “I’m not the sort of man women…wait for.” He shifts under her hands. “I fear it will break me, Cinders.”

Her eyes are sad when she looks at him and she whispers: “I will wait for you, Perrault, as long as it takes.”

When he kisses her it feels like the first time. His bottom lip trembles and he feels all tongue and teeth, accidentally biting her as his fingers tangle in her hair. Her hands are on him too, sweeping back his hair and stoking his skin like a fire. The familiar burn when he’s with her takes hold, beginning in his stomach and rushing to his skin, his nerves.

She pulls back and whispers those same words against his lips “I love you, Perrault,” before bringing their mouths together again. She repeats it into his lips, the words vibrating his skin and tingling on his tongue. And, after she explores his mouth, leaves him panting and holding her against him, she whispers it again into his ear.

It makes him laugh but he doesn’t let her go. “You can stop saying it, Cinders.”

“I’m not going to stop until you believe me.” He looks at her and she laughs but he cuts it off by capturing her mouth again. “I love you, fool.”

His hands slide down her back, over the silk that hugs her curves until his hands are on her hips. She is so close, body pressed against him that part of him feels that she is holding him together and without her he will fly completely apart. He presses his lips to her head, buries his face in her hair as he feels her nuzzle into his neck, press herself against his chest. His eyes close and he sucks in the smell of her. She pulls back to look at him and kiss him again, her eyes heavy, her mouth open and wet. All he wants, truly wants, is to stand here kissing her forever.

A throat clears somewhere behind her and he doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to look, feeling himself redden even as he holds Cinders against him. She jerks back and he is suddenly chilled by the empty air as she turns away from him, but his hand is still wrapped in her fingers, holding him beside her.

“Gloria.”

The stepsister is smirking at them, one sharp eyebrow almost touching her hairline as she looks down on them with regal arrogance. “Cinders.” Her voice is amused and she moves to cross her arms. “It’s no wonder you attract such a throng to the house if _this_ is how you say ‘goodbye’.”

Perrault is lost for words, but Cinders doesn’t take the remark as the insult it seems to him to be. “Someone has to make up for your chilly disposition, Gloria.”

“Yes, I am _clearly_ distasteful to the group of men in there awaiting my return.” Gloria smiles. “However, the Prince seems to be rather bereft without _your_ company.” Her eyes slide to Perrault and her smirk returns. “Although I can’t imagine why.”

Cinders lets out an almost inaudible sigh and her fingers twitch in his. She looks up at him and her eyes are deep; it’s all he can do not to kiss her again. “I understand if you need to go.” Her fingers are rough, insistent, when she pushes them into his as though afraid to break this contact. “Just remember…remember what I’ve said.” He nods down at her, unable to speak.

Her hand leaves his easily when she turns to lead Gloria away. “Alright, _dear sister_ , I suppose we can’t leave our guests to their own company…who knows what they’ll do.” She disappears and Perrault feels his legs lose their strength as he sinks into one of the chairs flanking the door. His heart is beating and he struggles to find his breath. His jacket lies discarded on the floor at his feet and he stares at it.

When he does look up Gloria is still standing there, unmoved, arms still crossed. Now her smirk is gone and her brilliant eyes look like steel. “If you hurt her I _will_ hurt you.” Her arms drop.

“I won’t-“

“I don’t care.” She holds up a hand to stop him and shakes her head. “Just know that I will not think twice when I destroy you.”


	12. Chapter 12

Their pattern now retains its regularity. Walks together through the town at a respectful distance coming ever more frequently. When they get to the woods, lost near the lake, he finds that he always takes her hand. She smiles at him and sometimes wipes dirt from his face. He smiles at her and, when he’s certain they are alone, leans in to kiss her, to hold her against him. She seems to glow now when they are together, burning with a secret fire that catches tight and taut in his stomach. 

His body becomes more insistent with her sometimes, hardening as she pushes against him, rubbing against him. Sometimes he finds her lying on the grass, his body covering hers and she emits the sort of soft whimpering that drives him mad, her fingers in his tunic, her lips on his neck. He always steps off her, pulls away before things can go too far. But one day she holds him still when he tries to leave, takes his hand and slides it beneath her skirts where he finds her soft and wet. 

“Please, Perrault.” He feels himself come completely undone, his resolve disintegrate, his certainty that she will learn better, that she will pull herself away, if only he gives her the time. The lake seems to hum behind them when he slides inside of her, a sharp movement as he holds her arms above her. She gasps, the pained look revealing her virginity, but he buries it in a kiss, making her soften. When she cries out around him, breasts arching upwards he nearly loses his mind and empties himself deep inside her as her fingers embrace his hair. Later she tells him that Lady Carmosa had already given her a tea to brew in case this were to happen.

When she tells him she loves him this time – the first since the night in her house – fool that he is, he finds he is beginning to believe her, coming to accept this companionship and this happiness. A bluebird is singing above them and just before it takes flight it releases a stream of white onto his leathered-back that makes them both collapse in laughter. Their mouths connect even as they smile and he whispers that he loves her too.

His guild puts him at the head of a small squad of men, former soldiers mostly, men who still seek honour, men who still respect their duty. They are men of arms, like he is, and they seek to use that to make the world better. They take contracts from neighbouring towns, one or two small farms. Once even from Cinders herself, just after she extends her lands and her sheep begin to disappear. When she pays them and then pulls him forward to kiss him before his men they look at him as though he has grown horns. He should be angry at her for that, but he finds he doesn’t care even as she glows red.

Sometimes he is away for weeks. He knows she does not lack for company, for occupation. She seems always busy even when he is around, organising the house, buying lands, expanding their holdings and seeking artists, writers, musicians of all nationalities to congregate. She is fast becoming one of the most accomplished ladies in the country and she is often surrounded by suitors. The Prince still visits but increasingly sits near Sophia who laughs at him for his efforts even as Cinders encourages the couple. Perrault still believes that she will make him a good, if controversial, Queen.

Perrault meets his old friend there frequently and once, only once does Basile acknowledge his loss to the older man. “Not so used to being alone now, Perrault?” The young man smiles up at him, the jest honest and caring.

He sees the boy is trying, and he nods to the Prince. “Perhaps not so alone now, Your Grace.”

Yet when he is away he sometimes imagines the worst: he sees her bored of him, a casual comment, with distance, taken as a sign that she favours someone else. Her interest in the composer she now sponsors who teaches her to play the harpsichord, maybe. Tobias perhaps, always laughing with his old friend, arriving for his repayment on the loan, but staying for dinner. In his mind, he sometimes sees her dressed for that long distant ball, looking every inch the Queen she _should_ be; not a noblewoman waiting for and loving a relic.

But when he returns to her all of that slips away. She never greets him outside the house and while they still pretend not to be lovers, it is clear that no one in the house is under any illusions. Even Gloria has warmed to him and Carmosa, once, when she thinks he is out of hearing, comments that she never sees Cinders smile the way she does when he’s around. Her voice is edged with bitterness. Sophia’ crude reply is buried by the closing door as they, as always, leave the lovers alone.

When Cinders wraps her arms around him, pulls him to her he forgets his fear. When he kisses her mouth, feeling her eager tongue against him those other men don’t seem to matter. And, one time, without speaking, when he presses her against the sitting room door and buries himself inside her, feeling her moan and arch into his rhythm, he remembers like a shock that she loves him. 

At her parties now he still sits with the artists and watches her with her guests, welcoming them and introducing artist to patron, intellect to wealth. Yet whenever he thinks that Cinders has ignored him for too long, when he begins to find himself annoyed, she looks up at him, she always looks up, catches his eyes from across the room and smiles. When she comes over to him and sits for a while, laying her hand on his before all of these people, he remembers that she loves him. 

Even when they fight, when she accuses him of avoiding her, when he accuses her of flirting with other men, when she accuses him of being moody, when he accuses her of working too hard, he has begun to remember. Some nights, after she and Carmosa fight, she weeps in his arms, trembling as she speaks of her past, of brutal treatment, of loneliness and of fear. Some nights it is he, telling her about his father, about battlefields long gone and his own loneliness; he begins, slowly, to remember then too.

When she says goodbye to him, coming out to help him onto his horse before dawn, when he rides away to his duty in the soft moonlight, mind already on the chase, she kisses him and whispers that she will wait forever if she has to. Especially then he remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had considered continuing this and writing through Perrault's mental recovery, but this ending seems so right that I've decided to end it here. And, let's be honest, someone around here has to get back to writing her doctorate.
> 
> I know there aren't many reading this fandom so long after the game was released, but I hope you enjoyed it. I certainly enjoyed writing.


End file.
